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Blanche Wittmann
TW Histrionic PD, scientific misogyny, 'hysteria' bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_%22Blanche%22_Wittmann Marie "Blanche" Wittmann (1859-1913) known as the Queen of Hysterics, was the most famous hysteria patient of Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital. However, there is a record of a Marie Wittman, born on 15 April 1859 in Paris, who came to the hospital on May 6, 1877, suffering from epilepsy; this is notably similar to a publication saying that “W ... Marie, seamstress ... entered the service of M. Charcot on May 5, 1877”. "She began working for Marie Curie two years after Charcot died, and had to have both her legs and her left arm amputated due to radiation." http://studymore.org.uk/ycharcot.htm "Blanche Wittmann was nick-named the "Queen of Hysterics". The hysterics were a group of patients about whom the doctors were very embarrassed. They had clear physical symptoms, but no physical cause for them could be found and there were features about the symptoms that did not fit in with the doctor's understanding of what neurological damage would do. The suspicion was that the hysterics might be malingerers: people acting an illness in order to gain sympathy and benefits." This is so messed up considering modern knowledge of how autistic women go undiagnosed and resort to camouflaging amongst neurotypicals... 'hysteria' is a pretty natural reaction to such an existence... Astrology There is no conclusively known birth time for Wittmann, but sources from the hospital she stayed at note a "Marie Wittmann" born on 15 April 1859 in Paris, suffering from epilepsy.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_%22Blanche%22_Wittmann This day corresponds to an astrological signature of Aries sun and Virgo moon or Libra moon. Within her Pluto in Taurus generation, Wittmann was born with her lunar North Node in Aquarius. Mars in Taurus, Venus in Pisces, Mercury in Taurus, Lilith in Capricorn, Chiron in Aquarius. Major Aspects Mercury conjunct Pluto, Lilith conjunct Pholus. Articles Meet the "Queen of Hysterics" Who Was Freud's Early Muse - Gizmodo By Esther Inglis-Arkell, July 14, 2014 (TW: really awful Ableist undertones, implications of people faking mental issues) "Proving that fame isn't a good measure of success, Marie "Blanche" Wittman, became known both locally and historically as the Queen of Hysterics. Her "medical demonstrations" were a kind of medical reality show — one that inspired the work of Sigmund Freud." "But the story begins with a man named Jean-Martin Charcot. Given, an appointment as the director of the Salpetriere women's hospital in the late 1800s (a facility for mental patients and permanent invalids), he turned what most people would consider a mediocre stepping-stone into the springboard for modern neurology. Many of Charcot's patients suffered from diseases of the nerves - the literal nerves, not the figurative nerves. They gave Charcot a chance to study how the physiological deterioration of the nerves physically affects the body." "He believed that hysterics had physical symptoms that could not be faked, including an increased sensitivity in parts of their bodies, and sleep disorders." "Wittman had come to the hospital to be a nurse. The 18-year-old had had a difficult life. Her mother and siblings were dead, and her father was in another mental institution. After a series of traumatic events, she became by turns mute and paralyzed, or thrown around by violent convulsions. Charcot took notice, and Wittman transitioned from carer to patient. Charcot took over much of her life, giving her many physical tests for hysteria, and eventually treating her with inhalant drugs, "ovarian compressions," magnets, and hypnosis. She performed spectacularly under hypnosis. Going into convulsions on cue, becoming calm on cue, and following Charcot's every direction, she was known under the pseudonym "Blanche," and later under the title "Queen of Hysterics."" Honestly, so much of this is just screaming Atypical Autism to me, that it's making me very angry. She literally went non-verbal under trauma, had epileptic seizures and had family history of so many issues, but instead of recognising her maladaptive behaviours as a natural response to all of the challenges she's struggled with, they call her 'hysterical'. F-ck this.. The Story of Blanche and Marie by Per Olov Enquist, trs Tiina Nunnally (Review) - The Independent By Paul Binding , October 14, 2006 "'Love cannot be explained. But what would we be if we didn't try?" Blanche Wittmann wrote these two sentences five times, in more or less the same wording, in notebooks that were not to be discovered until 25 years after her death, encased in a brown folder labelled BOOK OF QUESTIONS. There were three of them, the Yellow, the Black and the Red. They form the basis for Per Olov Enquist's mesmerising re-creation of two intertwined lives. What love and what questions! Fiction could not invent anything more extraordinary." "... two years after Charcot's death in 1893 she went to work for Marie Curie, and by her side she would die in 1913. She assisted that infinitely demanding work with pitchblende which Marie carried out with her scientist husband, Pierre, was with her for their discovery of polonium and radium, and for Pierre's tragic death in a street-accident in 1906, three years after he and Marie had shared the Nobel Prize for Physics. Blanche sustained Marie through her period of grief-stricken withdrawal, and was her confidante when in 1911 she won a second Nobel Prize (for chemistry) while enveloped in a sex scandal. Blanche shared Marie's awed delight in the shimmering blue of radiation; it was like the sea turning into a living animal, it partook of that luminescence that had surrounded her in the Charcot years. "Radiation," she wrote in her note-book, "is making my body disintegrate..." Over-familiarity with pitchblende resulted in terrible lesions, necessitating amputations of her left arm and both her legs. At her death, she was, says Enquist, "a sort of torso, though with a head"." References Category:Neurodivergent People Category:Celebrities Category:Personality Divergences Category:Histrionic Personality